Final Fantasy IX - Work In Progress!

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So, as those of you in Discord may know, @Kjata has begun work on a new Final Fantasy IX mod. Right now it's kind of a brainchild, but we hope to have something out within a few months. Since I don't start work for a few weeks, I'll be helping him out with some of the legwork.

Some ideas we've already been looking at:

Rework damage curve

Rework level curve

Rework passive skills

Remove fixed damage abilities

If you've got any ideas, feel free to post them in this thread! Though we may not use everything, we will take it into consideration if we feel it's a good idea!

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1) FF9 has a lot more variance in its output damage than its two sister titles, 7 and 8. This will make rebalancing tougher unless you can find a way to adjust the formula and reduce the range of variance (which I recommend you do, it's not very popular). If you're reworking the damage curve then keep this in mind. An example of the modifier that's attached to damage is shown below (for enemy attacks, player attacks vary per weapon but usually have /8 instead):

Bonus = Str + Rnd MOD ([(Lvl + Str) / 4] + 1)

2) Replacement characters like Marcus, etc. gain stats when they level up but these bonuses are transferred to later characters in addition to their own bonuses which can make them OP. If Marcus is leveled high in the swinging cage area, then Eiko will later join with superior stats to your other characters. I'd recommend finding a fix for this, or making it so that EXP or levels aren't available for temporary characters.

3) The game uses % modifiers for damage bonuses & penalties from abilities. While this tends to be manageable early on, it'll get more difficult later on toward end-game. If you can, try and adjust the actual value of bonuses/penalties of things like X Killer, Protect/Shell, Elemental, Back Row, etc. And keep an eye on Reflect too; a full party with Reflect can bounce a multi-target spell at an enemy 4 times without the spread penalty being applied and I think it gains a 2x bonus damage when reflected as well.

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1) FF9 has a lot more variance in its output damage than its two sister titles, 7 and 8. This will make rebalancing tougher unless you can find a way to adjust the formula and reduce the range of variance (which I recommend you do, it's not very popular). If you're reworking the damage curve then keep this in mind. An example of the modifier that's attached to damage is shown below (for enemy attacks, player attacks vary per weapon but usually have /8 instead):

Bonus = Str + Rnd MOD ([(Lvl + Str) / 4] + 1)

...

3) The game uses % modifiers for damage bonuses & penalties from abilities. While this tends to be manageable early on, it'll get more difficult later on toward end-game. If you can, try and adjust the actual value of bonuses/penalties of things like X Killer, Protect/Shell, Elemental, Back Row, etc. And keep an eye on Reflect too; a full party with Reflect can bounce a multi-target spell at an enemy 4 times without the spread penalty being applied and I think it gains a 2x bonus damage when reflected as well.

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Regarding Eiko inheriting stat bonuses from Marcus, unless one grinds 25 or more level ups with him, the gains will be offset by the stat loss that occurs from level averaging when a new character joins for the first time. Playing normally, Eiko and Amarant join at substantially higher levels than the rest of the cast. It takes grinding a lot of levels with Marcus and artificially keeping party levels low to really exploit this. It's a tedious task just for one character to have better stats.

Could really go for status effects (and other indirect stuff like Steiner's Breaks) being more worthwhile. Because level differences affect status spell accuracy and the player will usually be lower leveled than the enemies they're facing, I often felt it wasn't worth the turn to use them. With effective 30-50% status accuracy in many cases, straight bashing seemed more appealing

As a side thought, having an enemy that always appears with another have extreme defenses but low HP would provide incentive to use the Trouble status. It never felt worth the effort in the unmodded game.

Having a better spread of sources to learn Action abilities sounds quite nice. Equipping a crummy weapon because it's the only source for an ability felt stupid. And I like the idea of having more abilities available sooner; I have that feeling that people who would play the mod have already been through the original.

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Idk if all of these suggestions fit in the scope of what you are doing right now but they are my main gripes with FF9:

1)Rebalance difficulty. The party can just do way too much damage and then laugh with regen. I'd prefer a more balanced difficulty, not a hard type.

2)Speed up battles. They are way too slow. If I remember right battles are default at 15 FPS? I've used Memoria Engine to modify the battle speed and I think 24 FPS was about what I preferred for battles(didn't look silly how fast they were moving but it wasn't too slow).

3)nATB from FF6 BNW and make speed matter. I hate ATB that doesn't stop when actions are being taken. They figured this out with Chrono Trigger for Christ's sake.

4)Differentiate Eiko and Garnet(Dagger). The idea I had was to make Eiko a Red Mage(she already has the clothes for it really) and less focused on Summons(nerf her last summon). I'd also like for summon power to be separated from gems and just function like a normal spell. Also default as fastest cast animation. Also make healing more necessary(this would go along with increased difficulty).

5)Rework how Quina learns Blue Magic. I love Blue Magic in games but I always feel like its way too annoying to get the spells. Just make it easier I guess. This might just be personal preference lol.

6)Remove stats from leveling being based on equipment/remove stat growth entirely(each character has base stats, then just gets stats from equipment). I'd prefer the first but that seems like it would be difficult.

I'm sure a lot of these would be more for future plans haha.

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First of all, NOTHING is going to be done with Tetra Master. I'm not even going to fix the Rank bug. The most work im going to put into it is changing treasure chests that give you cards into something better.

As for Quina, I'm giving Vivi Scan so that when you get Quina you can see the hp values, which should make it easier to work out Eat. Cook can also be used on full health enemies, so Quina going into trance means no more fucking around.

As for differentiating between Eiko and Garnet, I have a few ideas for this. The very basic idea is to make Eiko very much a support character, like "uses rackets for damage" level of support. Basically the anti-Vivi, as Vivi doesnt do anything but fuck up the enemies, Eiko doesn't do anything but bolster the party. I'll have to look into what all can be done with abilities, but Dagger should basically be the middle ground between the other two.

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Because for the former, some of the things you want to do can be hard to mod (Rework passive skills, change the damage outputs...). It goes to MIPS assembly modding. For the later, these things are a bit easier because it's compiled C# that can be un-compiled then re-compiled after the tweaks.

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Remove the 50% increased Fire damage on Robe armor, shit's dumb yo. Make sure to remove the Charge! ability unless you want me to spank Ozma again . If you intend to balanced endgame around lvl 99, make it relatively easy to grind.

And tbh, most changes LandonRay made in his hack, like removing the main stats from armor and removing to ability to absorb elements.

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Not to dismiss this suggestion, but I feel like this is one of those "get gud" recommendations.

Early game has a ton of moments where buffs are useless because of how short they are. Garnet could literally spend an entire battle spamming protect on people and never actually manage to have the full party have it. Which is ridiculously stupid. I mean, it doesn't need to last like... FF8 long (forever), but it could last a bit longer.

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Early game has a ton of moments where buffs are useless because of how short they are. Garnet could literally spend an entire battle spamming protect on people and never actually manage to have the full party have it. Which is ridiculously stupid. I mean, it doesn't need to last like... FF8 long (forever), but it could last a bit longer.

Buffs are typically going to be party wide, for this reason. I once tried putting Shell on my party during the BW2 fight, the first one ran out while I was casting the third. I went "fuck it" and left Garnet on standby ready to sling a cure.

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Buffs are typically going to be party wide, for this reason. I once tried putting Shell on my party during the BW2 fight, the first one ran out while I was casting the third. I went "fuck it" and left Garnet on standby ready to sling a cure.

Good shit. I approve.

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I don't undestand what everyone's deal with the level up stat items is.

It's a mixture of people not wanting to micromanage their stat level ups while they level(even if it's unnecessary, perfectionist tendencies in gaming haha) and wanting stats to be meaningful. I'd personally be all for completely removing stat gains based on levels and just having it attached to gear instead of the other way around, more customization for stats later on. I don't know which way would be easier though. I'd just go with the easier option.

It's just bad game design really.

Also I like your Eiko idea as well. They are just almost the exact same currently. Move Holy to Garnet, nerf Madeen and go from there adding support abilities.

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It's a mixture of people not wanting to micromanage their stat level ups while they level(even if it's unnecessary, perfectionist tendencies in gaming haha) and wanting stats to be meaningful. I'd personally be all for completely removing stat gains based on levels and just having it attached to gear instead of the other way around, more customization for stats later on. I don't know which way would be easier though. I'd just go with the easier option.

It's just bad game design really.

Also I like your Eiko idea as well. They are just almost the exact same currently. Move Holy to Garnet, nerf Madeen and go from there adding support abilities.

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Early game has a ton of moments where buffs are useless because of how short they are. Garnet could literally spend an entire battle spamming protect on people and never actually manage to have the full party have it. Which is ridiculously stupid. I mean, it doesn't need to last like... FF8 long (forever), but it could last a bit longer.

Okay, this is fair. What about raising Spirit across the board? What else does that affect? I mean I know it affects a lot of different things, I'm more wondering about problematic stuff.